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Discussion Topic

This article, Solid State Disks are Doomed is from the PC World website on January 27, 2011.
I invite you to respond to this discussion covering the following points:
  • What is the issue?
  • Who are the stakeholders involved in this issue?
  • What are the IT technical terms and can you explain them?
  • What is the social/ethical impact on stakeholders?
  • What is ONE problem you have identified after analysing the issues?
  • What is a solution to this problem?
  • What is the future scenario?
In addition, after responding, reading and responding again to this discussion forum you are asked to work through the IT in the News assignment and create a personal blog post based on this news item.
Let's get the conversation going!

Responses

Reply by kaeF on January 30, 2011 at 2:07pm The issue in this article is the cost of SSD. Because SSD is expensive, it is only affordable for particular area of consumers.

I think steakholders in this article are
  • Company that try to sell SSD
  • People who buy SSD and put it into their product (Apple, Toshiba, Sony etc...)
  • Consumers (such as people in Business, teachers - Necessary to buy laptop with SSD, because it works faster and can contain more memories)

Reply by Yae F on January 30, 2011 at 3:18pm
  • What is the issue?
Cost of SSD
Quality of SSD, because company should make high-quality SSD to balance cost and quality of SSD, because customer doesn't want to buy expensive thing which has low-quality. And in order to get customers, company have to make high-quality SSD, which means they need to develop technology to make high-quality SSD.
  • Who are the stakeholders involved in this issue?
Company, customer, organization who make/buy SSD.
  • What is the social/ethical impact on stakeholders?
money. If many people bought SSD, company will get profit, but for customer, they have spend higher cost than HD/flash memory to get SSD.
  • What is ONE problem you have identified after analysing the issues?
Cost of SSD
  • What is a solution to this problem?
If Everyone buys SSD, then cost of SSD would be cheaper. Also, technology would develop.
  • What is the future scenario?
SSD is not going to be cheaper for few years.

SSD: It can store data.
Advantage is it doesn't create sound.
And, it works faster than RAM (random access memory).
Disadvantage is it is expensive.

NAND flash: It is a kind of flash memory.
Advantage is doesn't costs lots of money to make it.

Reply by Ye Eun Yoon on February 7, 2011 at 12:32am
I kind of disagree with what you said for the solution. You said the cost of SSD would get cheaper if more and more people purchase. Don't you think that it will go more expensive since they are running out of NAND when so many people want them..

Reply by Srilakshmi on February 4, 2011 at 7:03pmWhat is the issue?
The issue concerning here is that SSD's are really expensive and therefore it is not affordable to all the custiomers
Who are the stakeholders involved in this issue?
The Stakeholders involved in this issue are
Customers who are interested in buying SSD's
The technicians involved in the process of making the SSD
The Company selling the SSD's

What is the social/ethical impact on stakeholder?
The most important social/ethical concern is of Accessibility as the company is making the SSD's too expensive that not many customers are able to afford it therefore it also affects the profit making process for the company.
What is ONE problem you have identified after analysing the issues?
The main problem here is the cost of the SSD's


Reply by perpetua magoke on February 4, 2011 at 7:11pmAnalysis. (questions answered)
  • The issue here is the reduction in production of the SSDs which are largely used storage devices . this has been due to the reduction of the NAND memory which is used to make these devicesi. It is instead used in most of IT hardware like the mp3 players, mobile phones, tablet computers,etc. this reduces the production and therefore the demand can not be met.
  • The primary stakeholders in the issue here are the manufacturers of the SSDs. When there is no raw material, there can not be production and therefore these manufacturers may not have jobs.
  • The secondary stakeholders are the users of SSDs. They will have to switch to other storage devices which may not be as good as the SSDs.
  • The main problem that is rising here is that the SSDs are going to be expensive for the customers since the demand is high yet the supply is low.
  • If there are ways to increase the NAND memory, then they should be put into action fast since technology is growing really fast and soon everyone will need the best storage device.
  • In future the SSDs are predicted to not be as expensive as they are now.

Reply by Ye Eun Yoon on February 7, 2011 at 12:30am
  • What is the issue?
    • There isn't enough NAND flash in the world and this is unlikely to change.
  • Who are the stakeholders involved in this issue?
    • manufacturers of NAND flash, Seagate, customers...
  • What are the IT technical terms and can you explain them?
    • SSD (Solid State Disk): a data storage device that uses solid state memory to store persistent data.
    • Flash drive: offers lower power consumption and smaller sizes for laptop computers, faster access times.
    • NAND flash: prevalent type of chip used in SSDs right now
  • What is the social/ethical impact on stakeholders?
    • SSDs require higher-quality chips, which are difficult to produce. However, they don't exactly provide an incentive for manufacturers.
  • What is one problem you have identified after analysing the issues?
    • NAND flash is not enough. Even if more factories were built, it would still be hard to meet the demand. Not just that, creating the plants would be way too much expensive.
  • What is a solution to this problem?
    • Since producing SSDs require too much cost and work, it is not efficient to invest much money on it. The money has to be used more wisely to develop some other type of storage device which doesn't require such hard work.
  • What is the future scenario?
    • Technology is developing at a dramatic range. In fact, the article even said that 2011 NAND production capacity is set to grow by 81 percent. If this trend continues, there will be improvement on producing SSDs, and we will be able to see them. But it has to be noted that this won't take short.

Reply by Bhargav Naik on February 7, 2011 at 9:14pm
  • The Issue is that manufacturing SSD's are very expensive and SeaGate is only one producing the SSD's. They might not skilled labour of the technology to manufacture SSD's at lower price. The demand in market for SSD's for sure is high but right now SeaGate cannot manufacture at a cheaper price.
  • Stake holders would be Apple, Toshiba, Samsung and Sony.
  • Social issue is that the cost of SSD it very high as there are not many Company capable of producing SSD's at a lower price so that most people can afford it.
  • It is not available to everybody who uses computer. The cost is very high for people to afford SSD's.
  • Solution to problem will be to find technology that can manufacture SSD's at a cheaper price. So now that at least some pople will be able to buy SSD hard drives.
  • Not really sure but I think that SSD would get cheaper and cheaper as more manufacturers come into the market so that technology can develop and it will become more common in the market and in products.

Reply by Genia Coman on February 11, 2011 at 3:00am
  • Not enough resources to produce enough quality NAND flash for the demand. The costs are too high for mass production.
  • Customers, buyers of SSD, companies.Especially computer users and computer manufactures.
  • The cost is a big issue. Apparently, compared to a traditional hard disk, the SSD is really expensive, and why producing a big profit for companies, is not really an eye catcher for your average buyer. (a traditional hard-disk of 500GB can be bought for 50$ or under, while a SSD equivalent will have a sky high price, of about 2000$. Or at least that is what they are saying in the article, as my dad recently bought a computer with such a hard disk and he is quite pleased with it. He actually makes fun of me now, about how much faster his computer is.)
  • The high initial investment cost for crating new fabrication plants to meet demand in 2011. ($250 billion)
  • Developing some other technologies or improving SSD and improving the production process. This is highly unlikely to happen in the near future, but for the long term can be considered as a solution.For short term there is no solution I can see, from what they are stating in the article. I am thinking that computer manufactures like Apple won't jump to put SSD on their computers, as the prices will go up dramatically and what they are looking for is to sell, not to have ultra expensive computers.
  • As technology is improving everyday (as I write probably, and as you read this also) I think that soon enough there will be someone who will find a way to combat the issues that arise with the production of SSD. Probably, sooner than we might expect, a new way of producing SSD will be found and the initial investment to go lower.
Ironically, the main issues is more of the high demand for SSD, which makes it complicated to keep up with it because it requires tremendous sums of money to assure a base for the production of SSD.